Advent 3: The Wise Men

 

T.S.Eliot’s poem Journey of The Magi begins:
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter’

It more than hints that at times this journey was tough and maybe these camel riders began to wonder if following the light which was beckoning them was really worth it.

Exploring faith can be demanding. 

Some of us may have just ‘slipped’ into Christianity, the product of Sunday School or home tradition.  Others might have had all sorts of ups and downs in their journey to baptism, confirmation or simply being part of a congregation – or not being part of one.  And most of us still feel ‘The Lord has yet more light to shine upon his word’.  Faith ebbs and flows, takes multiple turnings and constantly seems unfinished, always, always ‘A work in progress’.

The Magi are the outsiders in the Christmas narrative.  In a story so bound up with a specific culture, they blow away all the expectations; they broaden its meaning and deepen its relevance.

Faith, and those who seek it, often surprises us.  It’s expressed by unexpected people and found in unexpected places.

On the Sunday after the Queen’s passing, seven ‘extra’ people attended our Morning Service saying they just felt they needed to be in church that weekend.  During the Pandemic I heard from an ex-pat doctor living in Austria that she had tuned into our church’s podcast service every week – having found us by accident, feeling she needed God in those bleak days, she stayed with us every week until the podcast ended.

This beckoning light takes us on a journey, over moor and mountain ‘following yonder star’.

The Magi, who followed the star, are ultimately a bit of a Christmas mystery.  They are exotic, unexpected and simply ‘outside the box’. 

Some suggest they might have been Zoroastrian Priests, with a reputation for star study and fortune telling.

Zoroaster, Persia’s primary prophet, said he himself was the result of a virgin birth and, like Jesus, he began his ministry aged 30.  He predicted that others would be born, just like him, and instructed his followers to seek them out.

I think I probably grew up in a church that really felt it was the custodian of truth.  My church frowned upon ecumenical engagement because, I suspect, they didn’t really believe the church down the road was actually Christian – at least their version of Christian.

Well, I’m fifty years older now!  And I prefer to think of myself not as a Keeper of the Truth, as if I could ever put God in a box because he needs protecting, but as a Seeker after Truth.  God has that disturbing, yet exciting habit of jumping out of the box.

The light can and does beckon us on – to further journeying, further exploration, further questions and further encounters.  It can be messy, deeply disturbing, gloriously liberating, often confusing with a growing sense that we are on a task that never finishes.  God’s light, beckoning us forward on an ongoing journey of discovery.

One Epiphany, whilst living at Malvern, a group of us met up for supper and a play reading evening, based on Dorothy Sayer’s A Man Born to be King.   I was given the part of Balthazar and had the privilege of reading his wonderful response to meeting the infant Christ:

Do not ask me; I spoke like a man in a dream.  For I looked at the Child.  And all about him lay the shadow of death, and all within him was the light of ,Ife; and I knew that I stood in the presence of the Mortal-Immortal, which is the secret of the universe.

Perhaps that is it!  That the ultimate response to all the asking of questions isn’t watertight, scientific and dogmatic answers,; the ultimate response toa  journey of faith, one beckoned by light, is worship.